Religion, like war, was everywhere in the Roman world; as such its ubiquity is evident from numerous tombstones, altars and inscriptions all of which tell us an enormous amount, not just about Roman religion but many other aspects of Roman life in York. By and large the Romans were accepting and tolerant of the religions they encountered in their territorial expansions radiating out to all points of the compass from the Italian peninsula. For the first 1,000 years of their imperial existence, the Romans carted the Olympian gods and goddesses around with them as part of the baggage train, but they practiced a syncretism which allowed local religions and deities to mix and merge with their own complex, incestuous pantheon. Obvious threats such as the druids of Anglesey were an exception and exterminated accordingly, but these were a special case as the following will demonstrate.
As a symbol of just how important the Olympians were to the Romans in the earlier years of the occupation we need go no further than the vestibule of York’s Yorkshire Museum. The striking life-size statue of Mars, god of war, confronts and challenges you as you enter the museum. As already described, he is wearing full armour and carries a shield. He has a sword on his hip and in his other hand he was probably carrying a metal spear. The statue would have been painted in bright colours. Mars was dug up in 1880 along with three altars in the grounds of the Bar Convent next to Micklegate Bar. Did these pieces come from a nearby temple to Mars, hastily buried to safeguard them from barbarians, or Christians?
We have in York the dedication of a temple to Serapis – a Hellenistic-Egyptian god – by the Commander of the VIth Legion, Claudius Hieronymianus. This was uncovered in Toft Green in 1770. Other deities populating the city over time include Mithras, Tethys, Veteris, Venus, Silvanus, Toutatis, Chnoubis and the Imperial Numen. Veteris and Sucel(l)us (RIB II, 3/2422.21) were imported from the German and Gallic provinces. Sucelus is carrying a large mallet (also described as a hammer) and an olla or (beer?) barrel. He is associated with prosperity, agriculture and wine, particularly in the lands of the Aedui.
In terms of religion, Eboracum then was decidedly cosmopolitan. The Romans brought with them their polytheistic religion and their complicated, inbreeding pantheon, as well as other faiths adopted, adapted and syncretised over many years of foreign conquest and civilising. The Roman soldiers, the camp followers and the city that grew up around the military fortress signified, with their various deities and the altars and temples which honoured and housed them, the first recorded religious presence in what was to become York.
Mithraism
Mithraism was a mystery religion centred on the god Mithras as practised in the Roman Empire from the first to the fourth century AD. The religion was inspired by Persian Zoroastrianism worship of the god Mithras. Mithras was eternally at war with the forces of evil. According to legend he captured a bull – symbolic of primeval force and vitality – and slew it in a cave, to release its concentrated power for the good of mankind. Mithraism offered an escape from darkness into light but required in return a lifelong commitment; it offered fraternity and was a clubbish benefit society with inspirational ideals embracing duty, pietas, endurance and self-discipline – hence its popularity with the military; soldiers were, of course, predisposed to aspire to similar qualities.
Mithraic temples, caves, were typically small, gloomy, semi-subterranean structures, intended to evoke the legendary cave where Mithras killed the bull. Inside, clandestine ceremonies would be followed by ritual feasts, the devotees reclining on benches (podia) running along the side walls.
York is the only place in Europe where you can see original carvings of Mithras and Arimanius – good and evil – both together. The followers of Mithras had access to about 400 secret temples, mithraea, across the empire where worship and ceremonial feasts took place. Other evidence of Mithraic temples in Britain are in London and at Hadrian’s Wall.
The York stone was found in 1747 near St Martin-cum-Gregory Church in Micklegate; the altar stone dedicated to Mithras shows Mithras wearing his distinctive cap and slaughtering a bull, to represent his power over nature. He is surrounded by a number of other figures, including torchbearers representing day and night and other gods – the sun and the moon.
The bull is being worried by a dog and annoyed by a serpent, beasts traditionally associated with Arimanius. Arimanius is the bringer of death: Arimanius occupied the space between earth and Mithras’ kingdom, restricting the access of mortals to heaven; he is usually depicted with the head of a lion. The stone statue is of a winged deity (RIB 641): dressed in a fringed skirt holding two keys in his left hand, while a serpent girdles his waist and rests its head above his right knee. Found under the city wall during the building the railway station in 1874, it is now in the Yorkshire Museum. The dedication reads:
Volusius Irenaeus, paying his vow willingly and deservedly to Arimanes, gave (this) gift.
Eboracum (1962) tells us that the dedication is:
to Arimanius, the Mithraic god of Evil. The missing head was most probably that of a lion, symbolic of all-devouring Death. The snake girdle represents the tortuous course of the sun though the sky; the wings signify the winds; while the keys are those of the heavens and the sceptre is the sign of dominion.
Roman Britain offers a wide variety of shrines and temples dedicated to a range of deities and cults. Examples from York include an inscription to a temple of Serapis-Osiris and an altar to Mother Goddesses of the household by Gaius Julius Crescens found in Nunnery Lane. This altar is dedicated to the Mother Goddesses of the household (RIB 652). The dedication reads:
Gaius Julius Crescens to the Mother Goddesses (matribus) of the household served and willingly fulfilled his vow.
Another Crescens was remembered (RIB 671) on a tombstone excavated during extension work at the Mount School in 1911; it is still there. The inscription runs:
To the spirits of the departed: Lucius Bebius Crescens, of Augusta Vindelicum, soldier of the Sixth Legion Pia Fidelis, aged 43, of 23 years’ service; his heir had this set up to his friend (?).
The Mother Goddess occurs in a number of other finds: for Rustius, his limestone altar was found in 1850 under Nos. 15 and 16 Park Place, Huntingdon Road (CIL 1342) with the inscription:
To his own mother goddesses Marcus Rustius, a veteran, paid his vow willingly, joyfully and deservedly.
For Marcus Minucius Mudenus, his altar was found in 1752:
To the mother goddesses of Africa, Italy and Gaul, Marcus Minucius Mudenus, soldier of the Sixth Legion Victorious, river pilot of the Sixth Legion, paid his vow joyfully, willingly and deservedly.
Serapis
Serapis gained popularity in Rome from the first century BC and was first encountered at Memphis, Egypt, where his cult was celebrated in association with that of the sacred Egyptian bull Apis (who was called Osorapis when deceased). He was thus originally a god of the underworld, but was reintroduced as a new deity with many Hellenic aspects by Ptolemy I Soter (r. 305 BC–284 BC), who centred the worship of the deity at Alexandria. The cult of Serapis was a particular favourite of Severus; as noted, the temple was erected and financed by the legionary commander of the VIth, Claudius Hieronymianus, around AD 200; its dedication stone was uncovered in Toft Green. Hieronymianus may well have served in Egypt which is probably where he will have come into contact with Serapis; he went on to become governor of Cappadocia and is mentioned in Tertullian’s Address to Scapula Tertullus: angry at his wife’s conversion to Christianity, Hieronymianus blamed the Christians and brought ‘much ill to the Christians’ there. Hieronymianus is also identified with the senator mentioned in Ulpian Digest 33, 7, 12, 40. His own pagan leanings are, of course, expressed in the dedication stone in which he is named as the benefactor of the rebuilt Roman temple dedicated to Serapis.
The Serapis dedication slab (RIB 658) was found in 1770 and is also in the Yorkshire Museum: YORYM 1998.27. It reads:
To the holy god Serapis Claudius Hieronymianus, legate of the VIth Legion Victrix, built this temple from the ground up.
The Cult of Cybele and Attis
We find Atys on a tomb monument dug up on the Mount. Cybele was an early, and officially sanctioned, import from Asia Minor. As Magna Mater, she was a deity with interest to women and fertility; she was a universal earth mother who looked out for all things maternal and represented rebirth and immortality through the resurrection of Attis. Cybele was brought to Rome in 204 BC after consultation of the Sibylline Books revealed that victory over the Carthaginians could be ensured by her presence. However, once the cult was established, the Roman authorities must have wished that they had taken more care over what they had hoped for. The orgiastic, frenzied rites, the eunuchs, the dancing, the self-castration and other acts of self-harm by adherents – the Galli – were all quite alien and objectionable to many Romans: measures were taken to control the cult and to marginalise it as far as possible.
Christianity
Eboracum is, of course, famous as the place where strides were taken to decriminalise the worship of Christ and where Constantine I renounced the pagan Olympian gods and converted to Christianity. There must have been a Christian community in the city because Eborius the bishop represented York at the Council of Arles in 314. Two archaeological finds confirm the existence of the religion here, if confirmation were needed. There is a Christian motto on a bone plaque: ‘Farewell sister, may you live long in god’; this adorned a lady’s jewellery box and was found in a stone coffin with jewellery grave goods in Sycamore Terrace. The grave goods tell us that pagan practices lived on at this time. Then there is the ‘chi-ro’ stamped tile found in the Minster excavations.